I absolutely loved what I saw of Tokyo Jungle at E3. I mean sure, it's kind of limited in the way that low-budget crazy can be, but it's one of those games you forgive it its flaws due to the sheer crackling creative insanity of it all. It's at the top of my Want list for that reason alone.

Remember the "Monster World" series for the 8- and 16-bit Sega systems? Turns out Monster World IV is downloadable on PSN, and since it was cheap, I picked it up. Just completed it. Not sure how many hours it took, but probably around 6-8.

What it is, is a deeply charming RPG-platformer with a neat little system where, once you get a flying blue critter called a "Pepelogoo", you get to call it to you and carry it, using it for floating and double-jumps. It starts doing stuff like blow out flames, melt ice, get frozen, and push buttons as well throughout the game... Throwing it at stuff works as a catch-all for these things, though it is slightly less exciting than it sounds, since they're all obviously "buttons", so to speak. The graphics are neat, the music's good, the enemies are full of character. It's memorable, and it's genuinely challenging.

What it also is is a deeply infuriating game that often remains content to put you on a field with repeating enemies... You'll fight the same enemies over, and over, and over, and over, and over again in sections. The game does a decent job mixing up situations, but in the longer dungeons, they simply don't seem to bother a lot of the time.

This would be fine if the enemies were fun to fight. Some are, a lot of them are not. You'll find a way to quickly-ish kill most of them, and that's the pattern you settle into (again and again and again), with the game not really doing much to mix it up in a lot of the sections.

This becomes particularly annoying in the Ice Pyramid, a labyrinth where you have to scour three fairly large, labyrinthine (and for the most part COMPLETELY IDENTICALLY TILED) areas for a total of fifteen statues. You do this with very few save points, so if you forget to save manually (thank goodness the PS3 version supports savestates), prepare to lose up to an hour of progress if you die. And you'll get nowhere without engaging in some extremely fiddly, clumsy searching in the first two areas. The third area thankfully makes things less labyrinthine, but still forces you to backtrack through several similar areas.

The high points are high, though. Which is why I put up with the really annoying bits. It's the kinda game where you want to see the rest. I'm glad to have finished it, but similarly glad to be DONE with it.

So, um. Yes, I'm conflicted. Buy it if you find it cheap and tolerate very un-Nintendo design choices :)

Just bought Journey and I can't fathom properly describing the experience of playing that game. The soundtrack is sublime. The fact that you can chance upon others? Unbelievable. I thought they were generated by the game.

Also playing Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin which is a good time and Starfox Adventures because I don't know why.

Portrait of Ruin is pretty decent. It's the least good of the DS Castlevanias, though... Dawn of Sorrow pretty much perfects the Metroidvania formula (despite the thankfully-rare forced touchscreen bits), while Order of Ecclesia mixes things up to the point that it can feel like an awesome 2D shooter in places. I hardly touched the direct-attack spells after I got some of the neater, more unconventionally Castlevania spell-weapon thingies.

Starfox Adventures... I remember completing that back when it came out. It has good bits, and it had awesome graphics for the time. But good gods, some of the quests are asinine, especially the escort ones. And whoever made you chase after the currency in the game... Whoever made that decision, you're now receiving a mildly annoyed glare through my monitor.

And despite having way too many games to play through already, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was on sale through PSN for about the price of a used DVD. One of the apparently-best games of recent, for less than the price of going to the cinema? Yeah, okay, it's being downloaded now.

Also gonna start playing the Telltale "Walking Dead" game, because it's supposedly awesome.

I liked Dawn of Sorrow a lot, but I definitely enjoyed Order of Ecclesia more just for the difficulty and the system over Dawn of Sorrow's which I thought was basically Symphony of the Night+. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia is a pie vs cake debate, honestly.

Portrait of Ruin, which I just beat, was a little too easy and becomes broken once you get gryphon wing and just start floating over everything. The entire difference, being the two character system, seemed a bit pointless at times, especially late game when Charlotte becomes a liability.

Morac - I'm definitely still going! I'm super excited as this is my very first con of any kind. Got a great group of friends going too. Yes, I'm afraid that you have indeed agreed to meet up in the flesh and it's too late to back out now. I'm following you on twitter (as chiaslut) so if you want we can coordinate via DM or I can send you cell number for texting purposes.

Oh god, real life Whitechapel meetup is happening for real. Because I'm lazy, my phone number is 2505907398 (though the tweety-box is also still a good option). I'm going to be heading down to Seattle with some friends on Wednesday, and will be in town until the following Monday.

Given my personal transportation restraints, actual meetups will probably have to be at PAX itself. Though I will try to keep this thread updated will all the super cool things I will be up to, I may end up being completely distracted about it (read "may" as "probably will").

" all the game’s content is winner-generated. That means that the game starts out barren. One class for players to play, one monster to fight, and one item to use. But every round, the top two scoring players use a tool built into the game to make a monster, item or class and then that object is automatically inserted into everyone’s game, and players fight for new high scores in an entirely different game every round."

I finished my game and submitted it to Ludum Dare! Link is here if you are interested. Rogue-like actiony game in random dungeons where you play as a mutant maple syrup monster trying to escape a secret government facility.

So the Vita finally got its PS1 compatibility. And PS1 games DO look really good on it. The screen's just big enough for clarity in most cases, while still small enough that the more stylized PS1 games (FF9, Soul Reaver) look really good on it.

One complaint, though. Someone at Sony decided that it was a good idea to set the L2, R2, R3 and L3 buttons to different sections on the back touchpanel. The R2 and L2 button areas are just where my fingers naturally rest when playing. And there's currently no way to turn it off or even set the areas to different buttons. As you can imagine, this is really annoying in games that use these buttons.

Hey, Sony? I'd like to be able to set these buttons to the FRONT touchscreen, please. Or just turn off the back panel.

Got my (late) birthday 3DS XL on Wednesday, opened it for a few seconds to marvel at the pretty, and then closed and re-boxed it until today. Today is my day off, and now I've got a screen protector and Final Fantasy Theatrhytm. All is good with the world and the box can stop taunting me now. :)

Played a fair bit of RockBand Blitz last night. It's a fun little game, reminds me a lot of Harmonix's earlier stuff like Frequency and Amplitude.

If you have a decent pile of RockBand tracks on your console then I'd say it's worth the points because you can play every track you already own on it. And the 25 new tracks that come with Blitz will play in RockBand 3 as well.

Don't think it's as good an investment if you've not already been spending lots on RockBand over the years though.